ness, wrinkles, and squalid colours, on a face that is to me bewitchingly beautiful, has only the misfortune to be frightened by ugliness where I am ravished with charms. He that is so nice a connoisseur in good-eating, as to find, that, of twenty dishes, of any one of which I eat with appetite, there is none so dressed as to be fit to be tasted by an Epicure of his nice skill, has, by this, only the misluck to make a bad dinner, while I, at the same table, enjoy a very good one. I heartily pity the poor man to whom the pleasure of a walk is quite spoiled, if but the smallest bit of gravel get into the foot of his boot. As many new pleasures as you will-if they be but genuine. But, let us leave it to the TESTYS and SENSITIVES of the world-and they are, God knows, a mighty number--to refine upon wretchedness-to inflame every scratch with a pin to the torture and danger of the breast

pierced with a poisoned arrow-to shrink from the coming storm before its visible approach to enjoy, like a Highland seer, a second sight, that entertains the mind with none but visions of death and horror! Ah! to me, ten thousand times dearer is the resolution of the vulgar pro

verb, To LIVE, LOVE, AND LAUGH, ALL THE DAYS OF ONE'S LIFE!"

The reverend Author of the "MISERIES OF HUMAN LIFE," has evinced, in that popular work, a knowledge, admirably extensive and correct, of those minute incidents and circumstances which are, to numbers of men, the sources of occasional vexation, and which have actually power to render some very peevish or very feeble minds perpetually miserable.

One should judge, that he wished rather to make a sport of that host of petty. vexations, than by mustering them, by disciplining them by drawing them out

in rank and file, by improving the reach of their bayonets, and the level of their musketry, to render their invasion of human happiness more formidable and fatal.

:

Yet, if the former was his aim; he has, perhaps, to a certain degree, missed it. His book is illumined by many flashes of wit and it unfolds, here and there, much of the irresistibly ludicrous imagery of Hogarthian humour. In the whole, however, his enumeration of the "Miseries of Human Life," is too much a plain, dry catalogue. The vein of irony is not sufficiently rich, nor sufficiently continuous. SWIFT, STERNE, or VOLTAIRE, would have hitched in-something slyly and oddly humorous, into the description of every particular Misery in the whole List, that should have made the burthen and point of the jest to turn against the folly of the person who could make a Misery to himself of such a circumstance

or incident, something that should have transformed the nominal Misery into a Comfort, in the very moment of its ex-hibition. The reverend Author seems to be, almost all along, in sober earnest. I doubt not but his Catalogue must have made many more persons cry than laugh. I shrewdly suspect, that even the joys of his own existence have not been multiplied by his pains-taking and successful hunt after Miseries. LEMUEL GULLIVER found not even a Brobdignaggian more formidable than was a multitude of Lilliputians, surrounding him with bows not stouter than wheat-straws, and arrows not more powerful than sweet-briar prickles. And, it were not surprizing,-if, much in the same manner, persons who bear one or two of the greater ills of life, without being driven to wrong-headed despondency, should feel inclined to "make their quietus," under the "siege of minute

troubles," which this author brings against them-even-" with a bare bodkin!"

It is for these reasons, that I have attempted to contrast this detail of MISERIES with an exposition of some of the "COMFORTS OF LIFE," gay or serious. It is said, that JOHN BULL is best pleased with those who take the greatest pains to convince him that he is Miserable,➡that he is utterly undone. Yet, one should hope, that a book of Comforts may be not unacceptable, as a second course or a dessert after a book of Miseries. The following pages will possibly be found to shew, that most of those incidents, from which the reverend Author extracts Miseries, must, when seen in their due light, and when met with the proper spirit, become, absolutely matter of Comfort.

It is not denied, that, to him is due, as the first author of the general idea, a praise which the writer of this view of the